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Sometimes, I want to talk to my dad. The desire may be prompted by what is happening with the Oilers — once our go-to for conversation at Sunday dinner. Or I rub up against a memory only we would share; I want to place the needle at the scratchy beginning of the record and play it over again, together.
The desire to engage with my dad happened again recently when my husband and I were on a holiday in New York City, enjoying a few days of shows and museums. The Canadian dollar, as ever, was struggling, and so we vowed to buy nothing but essentials (cocktails mostly). But then, we were in Amy’s Bread in Hell’s Kitchen — with its pressed tin ceiling and legendary sticky buns — and they had tea towels for sale. They were bright yellow and turquoise with a cheery graphic of the bakery. Stupid expensive, but adorable.
I left Amy’s Bread with that tea towel and as I exited the bakery, I whispered to him.
“Dad. I just paid $30 for a tea towel.”
He tipped his head back, rolled his eyes. Then dad looked at me, and smiled (I could see his dimples). “You didn’t.”
“I did,” I squealed, delighted by his response. Dad was frugal.
My dad died two years ago this month and so he likely didn’t hear my hushed confession, though one never knows. Many people who have lost loved ones have similar experiences, times they miss their people and speak out loud to them. For me, those moments may reflect a family trope — one of the many ordinary moments that bound us like string around brown paper. Or sometimes there’s a question that only Dad could answer, and I wonder why I never thought to ask it while he was alive.
Shortly after his death, I was flooded with such questions. There were so many gaps in my knowledge of his life — details about the losses, career challenges, or health issues he might have experienced. Particularly, I wanted to know how he had coped when his own dad died. My dad was only 26 when he lost his father to a brain tumour, but already he was a father himself to a baby girl, me.
What was it like to become a father, and lose a father, so close in time? And when his dad was sick, did they talk about it? But I was alone with my wondering. I don’t know whether the answers would have revealed anything new about my dad or our relationship. Still, my dad, once so solid in his fall coat with the plaid collar, his bucket hat, now felt ephemeral, mysterious.
One of my favourite columnists, Oldster Magazine’s Laurie Stone, wrote about her late father not long ago and here is what she said: “The mystery of who we were to each other is only something you see looking back, and maybe what you are seeing is the indeterminateness of looking back, itself.”
Now that some time has passed since Dad’s death, and I see the messy splendour in the lives of my sons and their families, I understand the backward glance, the sudden and unexpected importance of questions never asked. Family life is all in the doing — from the oh-so-present sweaty struggle to get toddlers into boots and snowsuits to the swiftly disappearing birthday parties and Christmas mornings. The time for questions rarely makes itself available and when it finally does, your turn is already over.
That finality bothered me following my dad’s death. But nearly two years later, I find the questions drifting. It’s partly a conscious effort; I don’t want to feel sad about things unsaid. But it’s also that my perspective is changing. Now, when the urge to speak with Dad arises, I tell him. Or else I pull something from the kaleidoscope of our lives together, and watch it again in my mind.
Dad and I used to play a game when, as an adult, I left some food on my plate after Sunday dinner.
“I can’t finish that Dad,” I would say, pointing to a scrap of roast beef on my plate, a bit of bun.
“Eat it or you’re not leaving the table,” my dad would reply.
“Not eating it.”
He tips his head back, rolls his eyes, looks at me. Everything I need to know is in the smile.
— Liane Faulder writes the Life in the 60s column. [email protected]